Fonteyn Quotes

#1. Mother loved dance so much that she thought (ballerina) Margot Fonteyn should be the president.

Chita Rivera

#2. I have never wanted to live to be old, so old I'd run out of friends or money.

Margot Fonteyn

#3. Then he just let it ring, the phone pressed to his head like a pistol, her picture in his hands.

Geoff Dyer

#4. Dancing was something to be taken very seriously when engaged in and otherwise put out of mind.

Margot Fonteyn

#5. I loved the bike because it gave me some measure of independence that I did not have.

Paul F. Tompkins

#6. The first night is the worst possible time to make a hard and fast criticism: the baby never looks its best on the day it is born.

Margot Fonteyn

#7. Dancers are both athletes and artists.

Margot Fonteyn

#8. Jumping for joy' is a very basic human reaction, and a child skipping down the street is simply an untrained dancer.

Margot Fonteyn

#9. Generally speaking, we are all happier when we are still striving for achievement than when the prize is in our hands.

Margot Fonteyn

#10. Get Carter remains among the great crime novels, a lean, muscular portrait of a man stumbling along the hard edge - toward redemption. Ted Lewis cuts to the bone.

James Sallis

#11. An optimist sees the beauty in the midst of ugliness.

Debasish Mridha

#12. To anyone seeing him but not knowing him, Saul Panzer was nothing but a little guy with a big nose who never quite caught up with his shaving.

Rex Stout

#13. Traveling carries with it the curse of being at home everywhere and yet nowhere, for wherever one is some part of oneself remains on another continent.

Margot Fonteyn

#14. Creativity is the ability to find new solutions to a problem or new modes of expression; thus it brings into existence something new to the individual and to the culture.

Betty Edwards

#15. Genius is another word for magic, and the whole point of magic is that it is inexplicable.

Margot Fonteyn

#16. The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.

Margot Fonteyn

#17. The most important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative, and the second disastrous.

Margot Fonteyn

#18. All day
I practice
squeezing hisses
through my teeth.

Whoever invented
English
must have loved
snakes.

Thanhha Lai

#19. Ballet is more than a profession - it is a way of life.

Margot Fonteyn

#20. The essential thing about mothers is that one needs to know that they are there, particularly at that age when, paradoxically, one is trying so hard to break away from parental influence.

Margot Fonteyn

#21. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.

Margot Fonteyn

#22. The world of dance is a natural world from which civilization has divorced many of us by making it appear remote - something reserved for the few who have a special talent.

Margot Fonteyn

#23. I've found the perfect partner.

Margot Fonteyn

#24. Life offstage has sometimes been a wilderness of unpredictables in an unchoreographed world.

Margot Fonteyn

#25. Take your work seriously, but never yourself.

Margot Fonteyn

#26. There is no way anything of value can be done without some framework. It might well be that the framework is discarded or the rules opposed; that is not important. What is essential is that they exist so that one knows when one is in opposition to them.

Margot Fonteyn

#27. Unbelief is the greatest of sins.

Thomas Aquinas

#28. Life forms illogical patterns. It is haphazard and full of beauties which I try to catch as they fly by, for who knows whether any of them will ever return?

Margot Fonteyn

#29. It is absurd to believe that soldiers who cannot be made to wear the proper uniform can be induced to move forward in battle. Officers who fail to perform their duty by correcting small violations and in enforcing proper conduct are incapable of leading.

George S. Patton

#30. The world of dance is a charmed place. Some people like to inhabit it, others to behold it; either way it is rewarding.

Margot Fonteyn

#31. I explained it when I danced it.

Margot Fonteyn

#32. I think perhaps I've learned to be myself. I have a theory that all artists who would be important - painters and writers - must learn to be themselves. It takes a very long time.

Margot Fonteyn

#33. Genius is another word for magic.

Margot Fonteyn

#34. Things don't always turn out exactly the way you want them to be and you feel disappointed. You are not always going to be the winner. That's when you have to stop and figure out why things happened the way they did and what you can do to change them.

Jennifer Lopez

#35. Minor things can become moments of great revelation when encountered for the first time.

Margot Fonteyn